TargetTalk

I am attempting to break my 480 Plateau in FP and was looking for some advice.

Firstly what type of ammunition is best - speed? I'm currently using Lapua Pistol King but have some Center-X available or should I be using RWS R50 or R100 (a rifle round?).

Are there any particular training exercises anyone would recommend - my scaled down (NSRA PL14/PL15) targets at 20 yards are fine its just as soon as the targets at 50m the problem starts.

Remember that neither the PL14 nor the PL15 are scaled down 50m targets.

The PL14 has the correct sized rings (from memory but it would be worth checking) but an extra ring of black.

The PL15 is the same size black as the PL14 but the 10 ring is what was the 9 on the PL14, the 9 ring is what was the 8 on the PL14 etc.

A74BEDLM wrote:I am attempting to break my 480 Plateau in FP and was looking for some advice.

Firstly what type of ammunition is best - speed? I'm currently using Lapua Pistol King but have some Center-X available or should I be using RWS R50 or R100 (a rifle round?).

Are there any particular training exercises anyone would recommend - my scaled down (NSRA PL14/PL15) targets at 20 yards are fine its just as soon as the targets at 50m the problem starts.

If you are shooting 480, then type of ammo is really not the issue. Not sure what you mean when you say the problem starts at 50m

Fred Mannis wrote:If you are shooting 480, then type of ammo is really not the issue.

I'm afraid I agree with Fred.

Whereabouts are you in the UK? I assume you are in the UK because of your use of NSRA targets. It would help though if you put your location in your profile.
Can you get access to a decent coach and/or one of the coaching clinics?
Have you tried the NSRA?

Free pistol is not mastered. Free pistol is courted, cajoled, and supplicated with lavish gifts of time, effort and money. Free pistol may appear to favor you with occasional tiny favors, but in the long run will leave you broken and wimpering, always wanting more, always drawn back to it, like a moth to the flame. Enjoy!
* * * * *
On a more practical note, I have noticed that the common U.S. reduced target - the 50' B-11 - is printed on a disproportionally large piece of paper, even though the bull and ring sizes are correctly downsized. When I train mostly on the B-11 and then shoot at 50 yds or meters, the target looks extremely far away, which seems to affect confidence. Maybe the same thing is happening to the OP.

HTH,
FredB

I'm also hovering around 480 with FP and there is no problem with my free pistol or ammo. I'm pushing toward 550 with other ISSF event scores.

My approach is to keep plugging away with practice with air pistol, especially the endurance of 60 shot matches with AP and FP, and keep up the concentration.

It is the most challenging of ISSF events to master.

Good luck

Don't know what those PL14 and PL15 targets are but I have been using 1/2 scaled down targets to train free pistol at 25m and one problem I saw is that several scaled down targets have the rings correctly scaled down but the overall size of the target is not correctly scaled down, it is too big meaning that you have a bigger white margins around the rings and this gives you also a bigger white zone under the bull = more place under the bull to put you sigths (I assume you use a sub 6 aiming method as most 50m free pistol shooters do) what makes things easier than when shooting at 50m with the normal targets where the zone under the bull to place your sights is relatively small.

Another difference, but I assume you take it into account when scoring your results, is that the holes of the bullet in the target are not scaled down = too big what lead to over estimate your score if you don't take it into account.

I feel your pain.

I am learning this is a process, and no quick fixes exist. I guess this is like the oriental view that the path to get there is the goal, and some of us will never get to shoot 573.

Probably the best thing is to start by finding out what we are doing wrong, which is the hard part.

There is a very reduced library of value, so reading through it will be quick, but useful. Start a diary/note book so you can list the best ideas and exercises that you might think are of value, it might help you.

Talking to experienced shooters is always helpful, not all like to talk, but some will.

Many places on the net are available for consultation, I use many, and they have been my primary coach.

Been working on my grip for two years, trying to make it comfortable and constant under a firm grip for 90 minutes, had to change ALL angles on a Morini grip, if it hurts it is wrong. Until you forget about it, work at it.

Ammo matters, my gun used to like CCI now it likes Eley Sport, can't explain it. You should try ammo a few times a year. Even bad ammo will stay within the 8 ring so it is better to look in other places as well.

Some days your hold is not there, I guess those would be the best days to understand all that is wrong and practice aborting a shot. On competition days that is a tough break, but if you practice for it before, there will be no surprises just a lot of canceled shots.

All steps of your shot plan are amplified in free pistol, so learning what is not part of the shot plan and learning when to stop a shot, will reduce your flyer shots significantly.

My eyes have been getting tired of focusing on front sights lately, trying to find out if it is age, bad prescription, bad technique, etc, if you can't see your front sights it will be a flyer.

Most of my flyers are caused by, anticipation and trigger puling, bad follow through, guessing front sights, lack of concentration and not aborting shots.

Two years ago I didn't have a clue what all of that meant, but I was keeping those guns really hot. Now they run a lot cooler, but I still have a ways to go before I can identify all my faults.

Good luck and happy shooting.

Ahh Free Pistol.

Paulo is right... there are no quick fixes.

The only way to get better at Free Pistol to to train Free Pistol. Holding is a good start, follow that up with some more holding work and then when your arm wants to drop off... that is the time to start doing some real holding work.

Catch my drift.

There are a few main technical elements to go toward shooting a good Free Pistol shot.
Stability
Holding
Sighting
Release of the shot

These need to be worked on as hard as you can and unfortunately long periods of time.

What you need to do is work smartly. Find the areas that need the most attention right now and work on them.

As far as ammo goes, you should be shooting competition ammo in important matches CCI and the like hold an 8 ring group. That's fine to train with, but in competition they can cost you up to 3 points for 3 shots out of 10. Put simply as much as 54 points in a match.

Shoot the ammo that groups best from your gun. Its expensive, but that's just a cost of doing business.

Good luck.

Free pistol is demanding but you can train it and air pistol together, since the process is pretty much the same. So for example in free pistol poor triggering can be obscurred by recoil. Work on those aspects in air and free and the results will improve. Like wise the other attributes of a good shot release.

With regards ammo, you do not need the best but you do need good, and one that holds the ring you're aiming at. Buy as good an ammo as you can afford that does that and use it for training and competitions. Training with poor ammo will tend to give you excuses for poor shots - like 'its the ammo'. It's also bad mental training to switch between training and competition grade.

Rob.

David Levene wrote:The PL14 has the correct sized rings (from memory but it would be worth checking) but an extra ring of black.

My memory was correct.

The NSRA PL5 target has the same size rings but without the extra ring of black.

Because of the way scoring ring sizes are calculated the correct black diameter size (which should take no account of bullet diameter) falls between scoring rings.

The correct scaled black diameter should be 73.15mm. The PL5 is 69.60mm; the PL14 is 87.88mm.

The PL5 is therefore a better simulation than the PL14. The PL15 is nowhere near because of the size of the rings (unless you deduct 1 point for every scoring shot outside of the X).

I thought Lapua Pistol King was only meant for semiauto pistols. I've been wrong before now though.

Just my thoughts. I have yet to come across "average" ammo that groups the size of the "8" ring at 50 meters with a free pistol. The worse I had using really cheap and inconsistent ammo was about 2.5 inches. Test your gun using a vise/clamp or; just to erase any doubts, ask an experienced shooter to bench rest it for you.

Still, through it all, just follow the correct techniques that are so well explained in this forum. There's only 1 way to shoot a 10, and a thousand ways to not hit it.

Just a quick fact.
A free pistol target for 45.72m/50yards as a ten ring with the dimension of 1 and 25/32".
The target for 50m has a ten ring with 1 and 15/16", or almost 2 inches.

Shooting about 480 means you are shooting 8's and 7's with al few wel in the white.
Free pistol is about reducing your errors.
If you remove a 6 and a 7 a series and make them 9's thats 30 points in a match.

It appears you are paying too much for your ammo and trying to buy points, this does not work.
While machine testing .22 for Free pistol, I found that the best groups where about 18-22mm, average was 30-40mm and the worst was about 55mm (from a Morini at 50m in a machine rest).
That nearly all inside the ten ring.

The price of the ammunition was NOT a factor in its performance. Some of the cheapest ammo's gave very good performance and some of the dearest varied the most.
Some ammo's varied greatly from batch to batch, others consistant.
When hand shot, some gave better feedback than others and were nicer to shoot.
Find a reasonable price consistant ammo, then buy a case of it to train (and at this stage use in competition).
Worry about ammo group/batch testing when you bust 550-560 when a few mm will make a difference.

Try shooting at 25m on the back of the target (blank card), learn to watch the sight and call the followthrough.
Set up a target at 25m with the centre cut out at the 8 ring. Shoot to put all the shots thru the hole, I dont care about the score, just that you can call the poor shots outside the hole and know why you did them.
Work to eliminate these shots, once you know what these shots look and feel like you can work to abort them before they happen.

Get to know what a good shot feels like, at this stage a good shot is thru the hole. Then either make the hole smaller or move it to 50m.
Train to reduce your errors and get rid of the shots in the white .
Then get rid of the 7's and reduce the 8's.
Get rid of the 8's and you will be shooting 550-560's.

David thanks for posting the advice on how to practice and improve on shooting free pistol. We don't have people of your calibre at our club so its great to get a training technique as explained.

A74BEDLM wrote:Firstly what type of ammunition is best - speed? I'm currently using Lapua Pistol King but have some Center-X available or should I be using RWS R50 or R100 (a rifle round?).

As others have said, if you're shooting 480, you need to work on various technical and positional issues more than worry about ammo.

However, on this note, none of us can say what the best speed of ammo is because every gun is different.

Short of doing proper batch-testing (I don't know - do Eley do batch testing for Tenex Pistol, etc?), get a bench (ideally on an indoor range, although indoor 50m ranges are few and far between) and a whole selection of ammo - the Eley pistol brands, Lapua, RWS, etc. Ideally odd boxes of different speeds and batches if your dealer can find odds and sods for you.
Don't just do this for Tenex or whatnot, do this for budget ammo that you can afford to train with! Because the bond between barrel and ammo is unique to each barrel, what works well for you will almost certainly not correlate to price.
If you can build up a picture of which brand or speed works well in your barrel, that will give you even more confidence in your kit.

Everything that's been said befoe though is good advice, and improving your actual shooting is a higher priority than batch-testing.

OK, David M said it, but I'll say it again since the message really is important. After testing at 50m I've discovered that my Morini CM84 will shoot just about any ammunition into a 10-ring sized group. Some of the better groups were x-ring size. The worst groups I shot were with expensive ammo. Surprised? Don't be. Every ammunition is different, and every pistol is different, it's a matter of finding the right ammo for the pistol. BUT if you're shooting 480 then forget about the ammo. Buy cheap stuff and enjoy shooting it.

Now on to something else that David mentioned. This is, by far, the more important measure of ammunition. How does it feel in your hand? Accuracy in free pistol is the result of a happy combination of many variables, and one of the most important elements is the man-machine interface. If you shoot ammo that "feels" wrong then you won't be able to call your shots. If you shoot ammo that "feels" right and allows you to accurately call your shots (I mean call the shot to within 1 ring and 1 hour of radius on the 12 o'clock scale of shot positioning) then how well it groups from a machine rest is totally irrelevant. How that ammo groups as part of the "system" is what's most important. Your pistol, your hand, your wrist, your arm, your shoulder, everything comes together as a system. If your ammo works in harmony with the other system elements you will produce better groups than a machine rest can.

While there has been much talk about scoring rings on targets, all of this is totally meaningless. I managed to make my air pistol scores jump significantly when I started shooting at "ringless" targets. If your only measure of performance is score then you will not progress. Instead, measure yourself by group size, by consistancy, by your ability to accuractly call the shot. Once you have these elements in hand you'll find your scores will naturally follow.

Also, keep in mind that truly learning how to shoot free pistol requires more than a little zen. As a result you must teach yourself how to TRAIN rather than "practice". Practicing means just doing the same thing over and over. TRAINING means finding a particular element of the sport and focusing on that element to improve it.

As an example, a few years ago I hurt my shoulder and ended up with no stability whatsovever. The pistol was all over the paper, with my hold having deteriorated from an 8ring hold to about a 2ring hold. This could have been very frustrating, but in fact turned out to be an excellent learning experience because I finally learned how to TRAIN. One night at the range I would work solely on sight picture - I'd put a small particle (ie a fine black dog hair) on the front sight and then after the shot I'd analyze how clearly I saw that particle when the shot fired. Slowly I taught myself that I was not always concentrating on the front sight. Slowly I trained myself to have crystal-clear focus on that sight. That's TRAINING.

The only way you'll really improve is to pick apart your technique, breaking it down into its individual elements, and then improving each element individually. Finally you'll start gluing the elements together into a process to successfully fire a single shot, then a complete 10-shot string, then a complete match. It takes time but it's very, very worthwhile. If I had to give up all my other shooting and have but one sport to shoot, it would be Free Pistol. The opportunities for learning and personal growth are almost limitless in the Free Pistol sport. Master Free Pistol and you will have proven that you are capable of mastering yourself.

Well several months on and although I haven't yet (and might never) master FP I have had significant gains.

By Xmas 2010 I was scoring 490 then I decided to have a 4 week break from shooting in Feb after Airgun Champs. During those 4 weeks I never touched a pistol I just trained physically and mentally, read a lot of articles, coached a friend a little in Sport Pistol. Then I picked up my FP and shot 493 after the match I thought about what went wrong - Grip Pressure, Snatching and my finger catching frame/grip during triggering ( I have short fingers) so I modified the grip, moved the trigger, adjusted the weight and tried again - next day I shot 516 followed since by 507, 509, 523, 514 and 514 again. This equates to about a 30 point average increase since last year.

I know what I'm doing wrong - still push or snatch the trigger when it doesn't go off - need to abort shots that don't go rather then force. Grip Pressure and Heeling - I do the same in AP so working on that. Grip needs a little more Whittling but nearly there. I am also looking at buying a Rika or Scatt and getting a Coach. Any Online FP Coaches?

Everything that has been said before all applies to you, me, others to FP. Only one thing I can add is increase your (pardon the expression) abortion rates. At a 480 plateau ( which is a very common point ), your mind begins to think and repeat often...." Oh boy I'm there---whoopee"...., then you get this quandary return...."why, why, why!"...it's all in your head. Learn to put the gun down more often, when anything gets wrong, you call a shot or two and they ain't there where you think they should be, put the gun down. Go back to the basics of your "shot plan", eliminate everything from your mind when you pick the FP up, at the slightest distraction ....PUT DOWN THE GUN, SIT DOWN, RELAX FOR A FEW MINUTES, CHECK YOUR HEART RATE, STAND, UP SETTLE YOUR POSITION, WELD THE GUN TO YOUR HAND, BREATHING ALL THE TIME....NOW SHOOT. My best to you and remember that this too shall pass. Best "Doc"